Wednesday, March 23, 2011

'Move along, nothing to see here' was the message from the leader of the Tunisian Jewish community, who insisted that Jews had not been targeted in the recent wave of unrest - in spite of arson at a synagogue.For her take, The Jewish Week interviewed Tunisian-born Sarah Taieb-Carlen (pictured), author of The Jews of North Africa: From Dido to de Gaulle (University Press of America):

Q: Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the Arab lands of north Africa in the middle of the last century. Most left, fled, when Israel was created. How many Jews are left in these countries now, and what type of life do they lead?

A: In Morocco, 8,000 to 10,000 Jews. In Algeria, none. Tunisia: 3,000 to 4,000. In Libya, none. In Egypt, less than 100. In Lebanon maybe 30. In Iraq, maybe 40. In Syria, none*. In Yemen, less than 200. In general, they feel they should be as inconspicuous as possible.

In the streets, men do not wear a kipah and women dress very modestly. In quiet times, life is normal and Jews go through their daily routine like everyone else. Apart from the synagogue, there is no Jewish institution: no Jewish school, no Jewish social club, no Jewish community center. Socializing usually takes place among family or friends, most often Jewish friends.

Are conditions becoming more precarious for them now because of the recent social unrest and political revolutions?

Life is definitely more precarious for Jews in these countries. As described in the “The Jews of North Africa,” under Muslim rule, Jews were dhimmis: “protected” citizens without rights. Nowadays, any social or political unrest, any economic crisis is a good pretext for the Muslim masses – and sometimes the ruler as well – to attack the Jews. In Libya, since there are no Jews left, the Muslims desecrated graves in Jewish cemeteries.

The story of the Jewish refugees who came from Nazi Europe after World War II is well known. Why is the experience of the Jews from the Arab lands not known as well?

Maybe it is due to the magnitude of the unspeakable catastrophe which befell European Jews, or to the fact that the Israeli establishment was and still is composed mostly of Jews of European descent who naturally identify more with their European ancestors than with those Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Also this story of the Jews from Arab lands could be poorly known because of the resignation of this group who didn’t complain much and were resigned to their fate as refugees.

Is the Golden-Age stereotype of Jews living in peace with their Arab neighbors largely true or an exaggeration?

I will quote the famous Tunisian Jewish author, Albert Memmi: “The supposedly ‘idyllic’ life led by the Jews in Arab countries is all a myth … If we leave out the crematoria and the murders committed in Europe …. the sum total of the Jewish victims of the Christian world is probably no greater than the total number of victims of the successive pogroms, both big and small, perpetrated in the Moslem countries.” The famous Islamist (sic - I think she meant Islamicist - ed), Bernard Lewis, wrote: “The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians, and taken up by Moslems in our own time as a reproach to Jews.”

How much did the Jews of the Northern African countries contribute over the years to their homelands and to their new homeland in Israel?

The Jews have lived in North Africa since the ninth century BCE and they have contributed greatly to their homelands in all domains: literature, medicine, trade, politics, science, and crafts. After an initially difficult period of integration in Israel, today they have found their place in the Israeli society like all other groups.

In Israel, are they nostalgic about their homelands of Africa? Do they ever express a desire to go back for a visit?

Yes, most of them are quite nostalgic about their homeland, and many do go and visit, although many others would never do it. What is certain is that most of their children, who were not born or raised in North Africa, are not at all interested in visiting their parents’ native land.

3 comments:

as to why the oppression in Muslim lands was relatively ignored in Israel for many years.I think that the main reason was the domination for a long time of Israel's cultural world, that is, the media, school curriculum, etc by "leftists." Depicting Arabs and/or Muslims as oppressing or persecuting Jews did not fit into the "leftist" worldview. Since they were "colonized" peoples, third-worlders, they could not do anything wrong in any case. Further, some of these fools may have believed that if they showed the ugly side of Arab society it would make it harder to make with the Arabs. This is stupid and has been proven false time and again. But true believers cannot be swayed by truth. Moreover, in the US & UK & France, the govts have pursued pro-Muslim, pro-Arab policies for most of the past 50 years. This policy, expressed in the media and educational institutions of those countries, influenced public opinion in those countries [US, UK & France] and also influenced the Israeli "Left" which was in awe of those countries' cultures.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)